Time Turner
by The Infamous Wootermelon
Summary: Just turn it. His fingers shook as he started to tip it over.


_**Time Turner**_

_Disclaimer:_ I own the plot and original concepts, characters, et cetera. Everything else belongs to its respective creator(s).

Harry Potter played idly with the fine chain around his neck, zipping the fingernail of his index finger up and down the threadlike strand of joined links. His brow had furrowed in a contemplative frown, his dark eyebrows drawn sharply together over his brilliant green eyes as he fidgeted unconsciously with the slender chain around his neck. He stared at the floor, past the floor into nothingness, while his legs stretched out in long, aimless strides, pacing around his dormitory. Harry sucked his lips into his mouth and wetted them with a thin sheen of saliva, slipping the smooth inner flesh of his cheek between his molars and chewing pensively. Everything about his nonstop actions indicated that he was engrossed in his thoughts, causing the restive behavior he was half-unaware of.

Finally, he came to a stop and pulled the pendant strung on the necklace out from beneath his robes by a chain. A small hourglass dangled from the narrow chain of glittering links, still warm from his body heat. His fingers itched to turn it and reverse it all and turn time topsy-turvy. Harry clenched it tightly into his palm, feeling it dig into his flesh.

Time was such a mutable thing, so tricky. It was like water; try to hold it all in your bare hands and it'd slip away. It was like air; you can't see it, but you can feel it, laughing at all the mistakes you made and can't go back and fix. It was like fire; you were hypnotized by it, drawn to the ever-changing, ever-shifting force that raged out of control. It was like earth; you were comforted by it, healed by it, and it would always be there, unshakable.

It was like none of those things, tricky as a prism of bending light, simple as a fool. Men worshipped it, feared it, revered it, and hated it.

Harry relaxed his grip on the fragile hourglass, but his fingers were still furled around it. He could change it all. He could fix everything that'd ever gone wrong with a few turns, a few falling grains of sand inside of the hourglass.

Dumbledore could be here again, alive and three dimensional instead of just a portrait on the wall, snoozing and giving advice. Sirius would still be here, instead of fallen through a curtain to somewhere else; and he wouldn't have gone to Azkaban. Peter would be dead and buried for real, exposed as a traitor, this time with no bits bigger than the electrons of an atom. Cedric wouldn't be dead, spread-eagle on the barren, parched ground of an old cemetery where the Riddles were buried.

His parents… He'd have a family, not be an orphan raised by the Dursleys, who were as freakishly Muggle to most wizards as most wizards were freakishly magical to them.

As if to justify his thoughts, the selfishness of having everything back and nothing lost, he thought of Neville. He was an orphan of sorts, too, a potential candidate – or victim – of Professor Trelawney's prophecy. His parents could be back, with their sanity back, to raise him into something different instead of a miserable, beaten-down, timid boy.

Just turn it.

His fingers shook as he started to tip it over.

He stopped and closed his eyes, remembering a time, years ago, when he'd looked into a mirror and saw his parents looking back at him. He could almost – _almost_ – feel pressure and warmth on his shoulder, like a hand resting there. Harry could remember a time when he'd heard his mother scream for a killer not to murder her baby, when he thought he'd never be happy again. A memory from a swirling tub of silvery thought, when his father had tormented Snape and Lily had stood up against him came into his mind.

If he looked into a mirror, not a magical one, but one that showed just your reflection and truth, he could see them both. He – or his reflection, at least, if the mirror was lying – was the spitting image of his father, but with his mother's eyes.

"I'm sorry," he whispered suddenly.

His fingers slipped – by accident?

There was a clear, shattering sound of breaking glass.

Shards and grains of sand scattered in every direction across the floor.

"I'm sorry," he repeated, again in a hoarse whisper, before walking out of the room, his eyes blurred and glassy.


End file.
